“Building Picturing” features the work of sixteen painters whose approaches range from geometric abstraction to keen observation, from lyrical inventions with mark and color to restrained distillations of the landscape. These diverse painters are linked by their emphasis on the painting as a made thing, the result of an encounter with both tactile and formal constituents; paint and canvas, as well as color, shape, and placement. Neither hermetic nor naïve, these artists do not ignore the last few decades’ challenges to painting’s languages and ideologies in order to practice a nostalgic revivalism. They are fully aware that their images speak within a broader field that includes “high art,” news media, and cartoons, but they do not accept equalization as a premise, nor do they approach painting as a collage of readymade styles. Instead, they invest their very craft with meaning. Never simplistically painting “about painting,” they use the terms endemic to their practice to achieve the human qualities of curiosity, experiment, desire, and commitment.Vittorio Colaizzi is the Richmond painter who wrote the intense Assault on Taste review of my Markel Building show... prepare for some more assault.

I am (almost certainly) going to come down to NYC for that opening, and to see some other shows. The only show I know about that I really want to see is Sarah Peters, and Lauren Luloff if I get to Brooklyn. What else should I see? Please advise.

RELATED: there IS another review of that Markel show still to come out... it's coming. HANG TIGHT!